recently, in books

I've not read much lately, and haven't had much to say about what I have read.

Yesterday, I got a present of a little book called The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland by Frank O'Connor for my birthday last week. (I am 45 years and one week today).

Every Irish child reads 'First Confession' at school. It is a great story, about a boy who decides to kill his grandmother, very funny and a bit sad rereading it as adult. But great reading for a 12 year old. You can read it here. The other story by him I remember reading at school was 'Guests of the Nation' about the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish Republican Army during the War for Independence. You can read that here. The other two stories in the book, the title story and 'A Story by Maupassant' I haven't read, or at least I don't remember reading.

Today, I bought Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. As if I don't have enough books already! But this is a subject dear to my heart. I am convinced about 95% of the differences between men and women are socially constructed. And I think men and women have much more in common than the whole "men are from mars, all women love shoes, men are useless" mentality would have us believe. It's about power and it's about selling you stuff. So I am interested in what Fine has to say about it. Not sure when I will read it but sometimes, the thing about books is simply having them.

This is a vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes - with the scientific evidence to back it up. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, "Delusions of Gender" rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, help perpetuate the status quo. Cordelia Fine reveals the mind's remarkable plasticity, shows the substantial influence of culture on identity, and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider 'hardwired' is actually malleable. This startling, original and witty book shows the surprising extent to which boys and girls, men and women are made - and not born.

While on the subject of gender and books yet to be read, I borrowed Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography by Jo Spence. You can see some of her work here.  I think she is best known for her work around her experience of breast cancer and the treatment she had for it.

Passing through the hands of the medical orthodoxy can be terrifying when you have breast cancer. I determined to document for myself what was happening to me. Not to be merely the object of their medical discourse but to be the active subject of my own investigation.

She also did photo therapy which for some reason I am struggling to explain. She took photographs of herself reenacting or creating images of herself e.g. in various roles. She was a feminist and a lot of her work was about the female body and how it is represented in art. I read about her work when I was in my 20s in London and recently saw a couple of her photographs in Glasgow. I was delighted that Edinburgh libraries had this book by her. I have been playing with self-portraits in both photography and drawing so who knows what influence she will have on me.

And I am still reading Cancer Ward. I read the first half in a rush and am now struggling to pick it up. Not sure why.